With more than 340 mur­ders record­ed for the year thus far, one crim­i­nol­o­gist is con­cerned that the mur­der rate is now out of con­trol.

Dr Wen­dell Wal­lace said yes­ter­day that sta­tis­tics show there were few­er mur­ders record­ed for the same pe­ri­od last year. At that time, the mur­der rate was 227.

“In all ju­ris­dic­tions in the world, we have crimes. And, at some point in time, we must make that dis­tinc­tion and that de­ter­mi­na­tion that crime is out of con­trol, and more like­ly than not, peo­ple base that on mur­der sta­tis­tics. And at this point in time, for my good self, I think that the mur­ders es­pe­cial­ly, out of con­trol,” Dr Wal­lace said.

“When I look at the crime sta­tis­tics for Trinidad and To­ba­go over the years, it ap­pears that the oth­er ty­polo­gies of crime ei­ther con­stant or re­duc­ing, but the mur­ders, I think when I com­pare the mur­ders for the pe­ri­od last year, as against the pe­ri­od up to yes­ter­day, I think we have a high­er num­ber for this year,” Dr Wal­lace added.

The crim­i­nol­o­gist, who was speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme, al­so ex­pressed con­cern that crim­i­nals are now more brazen, since they are no longer hid­ing un­der the cov­er of night and are car­ry­ing out at­tacks in pub­lic places and dur­ing broad day­light.

He sug­gest­ed in­creas­ing a po­lice pres­ence, a mea­sure the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice con­tin­ues to as­sure is tak­ing place.

How­ev­er, Wal­lace re­called, “Back in the mid-1990s in Port-of-Spain, there was some­thing known as the Mid-Town Pa­trol Branch, and on al­most every cor­ner in Port-of-Spain, you would see at least two po­lice of­fi­cers. At that point in time, Port-of-Spain was ranked as one of the safest cap­i­tals in the world. Now, Port-of-Spain is not one of the safest cap­i­tals in the world.”

“Re­cent­ly, a ven­dor was killed in broad day­light in Port-of-Spain. Where are the po­lice of­fi­cers? I cer­tain­ly am not see­ing them. Po­lice of­fi­cers in uni­form and po­lice of­fi­cers in plain­clothes, they serve a dif­fer­ent pur­pose. If you want to de­ter crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, if you want to de­ter de­viance, you re­al­ly need to see the pres­ence of uni­formed po­lice of­fi­cers in our cities,” Dr Wal­lace added.

Over the week­end, Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob lament­ed that il­le­gal guns re­main a chal­lenge for law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

Asked whether an amnesty ver­sus a re­ward sys­tem for the re­trieval of il­le­gal guns will help, Wal­lace said he be­lieves they both will yield mi­nor re­turns. This, he said, has been proven be­fore.

“Some of the crim­i­nals will tell you, if I were to give up my firearm is like giv­ing up my tool of trade, I’ll be a tar­get for fel­low crim­i­nals. What hap­pens is that the amnesty pro­gramme gen­er­al­ly works with ter­ror­ist-re­lat­ed of­fences. For ex­am­ple, in Colom­bia, the ter­ror­ists ac­tu­al­ly be­came fed up of that type of lifestyle and they de­cid­ed to aban­don the ter­ror­ist lifestyle and give up their firearms,” Wal­lace ex­plained.

He sug­gest­ed dig­ging deep­er to find the root caus­es of crime in so­ci­ety.